McConnell’s World

My “Morning Joe” Take on why the Gentleman from Kentucky could find himself the key player in the next round of debt negotiations.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Mark Halperin, frame the battle ahead.

MARK HALPERIN: The President wants to keep the debt ceiling vote out of this and, on the merits, except for the little inconvenient fact that he once voted to not raise the debt ceiling when he was a Senator, he’s right…. Speaker Boehner’s getting a lot of attention, and he will. He’ll be reelected, almost certainly. The key person going forward is Mitch McConnell. He chose, in this case, to make a deal with Joe Biden that jammed the House and he gave up a lot in that deal. The question going forward, I think, on the fight over the sequester cuts and over the debt ceiling is, is there a model now where McConnell makes a deal with the White House and then the House has a governing coalition of Democrats and Republicans. Is that the deal?

…

MARK HALPERIN: He could have filibustered the whole thing. Mitch McConnell chose to be a quiet statesman — you didn’t see him on camera, he didn’t even meet face-to-face with Joe Biden but, quietly, McConnell’s the reason we have this agreement. Now, I wonder — he’s a great strategist — what his view is of decoupling the tax increases from the entitlement reform. Maybe he’s got some idea about how this gives [Republicans] more leverage in the next round.